Hell is Norwich

I have these journeys from time to time - I think I know where I'm going and then spend a good hour driving round a random town or village because I can't find my location - road names disappear, traffic lights get taken away - you know the kind of thing. I had a big mental block about the one-way system in Dereham for a good while...

Anyway, had a day off today to take Mum's computer to Norwich to hopefully get it fixed. There's something wrong with the tower, but Mum keeps saying she can't face sorting it out herself so I thought - take the bull by the horns and just get it done. I was aiming for a well known national retailer of computers - had the address and a rough idea of where I needed to go. Sadly not detailed enough and I didn't take a map...(my husband will tell you this is not unusual - just mention our trip to London - it's quite enough to get an hour long rant!) Got to the Cromer turn off from the ring road and realised it was completely wrong. So, pulled over, rang the shop and got a very helpful lady - went a bit like this :

me : I'm trying to find your shop - I'm in norwich and just turned off the ring road towards Cromer but i think that's wrong.

her : Yes that's definitely wrong.

me : where do I need to go then?

her : do you know where Asda or B&Q are? we're near there. Off the ring road.

me : not really, no. I've only just come off the ring road though so if I get back on it do I need to head back towards Thorpe or the other way.

her : oo. I don't know. I live in norwich you see, so I don't really know the names or numbers of any of the roads, I just drive to work. Follow the signs to the airport.

End of conversation. Sadly by following the signs to the airport I ended up ... the airport. Going the way I was round the ring road, the shop is actually the other side of the airport... Found it eventually but they were no help and too expensive to just have a poke round in the box. Ended up at a small independent computer repair place (very nice, but once again I turned off the road too early and was looking for it in the wrong parade of shops (how many can there be???)) - much more helpful, so I've left it there for a look. Apparently it's either the motherboard (potentially fatal due to the age of the machine) or the hard drive (more fixable). The annoying thing is that Mum has a laptop now so doesn't even need the computer itself, but is having some difficulty in motiviating herself into getting to know the laptop, whereas she's already used to the bigger machine. If the tower can't be fixed - maybe some kind of docking station could be fashioned - all the familiarity of the old system without having to buy a new tower???